What do LSE Economic History graduates do?

In 2013/14 94% of both undergraduate and postgraduate leavers from the Economic History department were in employment, completing further study or taking time out just six months after graduation.

Economic history combines the skills of the economist, the statistician and the sociologist, as well as those of the historian, therefore graduates leave with a portfolio of highly transferable skills that can be applied across a wide variety of employment sectors.

The top employment sectors for Economic History graduates were:

Education and Teaching

Information Technology

Investment Banking

The average starting salary of undergraduates from the Economic History department in 2013/14 was £37,000 and the average starting salary for postgraduates was £33,100.

Graduate profiles

These are detailed profiles exploring why LSE graduates initially chose to study with us as well as giving each graduate the opportunity to relive their LSE experience and fill us in on how their career has developed since graduation. We are grateful to all LSE graduates who have taken the time to complete our Graduate Profile Questionnaire in order to produce these profiles.

Employability skills

Studying within the Economic History department you will have the opportunity to develop specific subject knowledge alongside a set of highly valuable and transferable employability skills, including:

Abstraction: the ability to simplify complexity while still retaining relevance

Critical skills: recognising that evidence and statements are not all of equal validity and that there are ways of testing their validity

Framing and Problem-solving: becoming adept at identifying and understanding a problem, including recognising the parameters of the problem, selecting and testing evidence and subsequently constructing suitable solutions within a given time or word-limit

Comprehensive research skills: the ability to gather, synthesis and deploy evidence, data and information

Economic historians enter careers in the private, not for profit and public sectors. Typical job types include:

research-focused roles across a broad spectrum of activities, including finance, business, media, marketing, policy development and social issues

roles involving the communication of ideas and concepts, e.g. PR, marketing and journalism

roles requiring a wide mix of competencies and transferable skills (including research, analytical ability, problem-solving, numeracy, oral and written communication skills and the ability to manage people and resources), e.g. accountancy, management consultancy and graduate management programmes within businesses across a full range of sectors, including energy, telecommunications, consumer goods, financial services and local government

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